Raspberry Pi GPIO with BerryIO

Today we have been trying out BerryIO – a control system for Raspberry Pi which is web browser based for ease of use and set up.

Although BerryIO can be used to monitor the system status of a Raspberry Pi; of most interest to use was the ability to easily control GPIO without any need for programming experience. This makes home automation via mobile phone, tablet, or desktop PC a realistic option even for relatively basic users.

Installation is achieved by entering the following commands at the prompt:

With BerryIO installed on your Raspberry Pi, you simply enter the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the web browser on your phone, tablet, or PC, and after entering your Pi username and password when prompted you get a menu of options of which we found GPIO, camera (if you have one), and system status to be the most useful.

Selecting GPIO from the menu, all of the GPIO pins are shown and you can set them individually to be either NOT IN USE, IN (for inputs), or OUT (for outputs).

If you select IN for a pin (for example GPIO-7) as shown above, when a high signal arrives on GPIO-7 the green light turns on, and when the signal arriving is low, the green light is turned off. The web browser updates the status of the GPIO pins in real time – therefore no need to refresh the browser for updates.

If you instead select OUT for a pin, a toggle switch appears below the selector. Click on ON to turn on the output (green light illuminates for that GPIO pin in the browser), or click OFF to turn off the output (green light turned off).

The system status shows a few bits and pieces of information about memory, storage, loads etc, but this does not currently update in realtime so you have to refresh the browser for the latest data.

We will be looking into some useful real world useful applications for BerryIO, but it is certainly well worth installing it and having a play around with it just for fun.

BerryIO is still under development and new features and functionality are still being added to it. The release of an API for mobile app development should hopefully result in some interesting and useful tools being developed to control the Raspberry Pi remotely via a simple user interface.

Full details of BerryIO and the installation instructions are available here: install BerryIO.